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After providing us with News #7/1988, Se7en came up with one more issue of this classical German C64cracker magazine. Issue 3/1989 (May/June) encompasses 36 pages full of news, interviews, copyparty reports and random nonsense. Amongst other things, it features a German translation of the legendary “Crackin’ Comic” by Hobbit/Fairlight.

Download the issue >>> here <<<, or have a look at the details and credits at Demozoo.

We managed to bring back another long-lost paper magazine – issue #6 of Pirates, the Belgian C-64crackers‘ magazine edited by F4CG. A thousand thanks go to Reset/Transcom, who found a stash of papermags and was willing to scan them and share them with us (more to come in the next weeks). This issue offers, amongst other things, a report on the Australian C-64 scene, an interview with famous game-musician Markus Schneider as a young kid, party reports from Contex Copy-Party (Finland), Crazy Copy-Party (Switzerland), Venlo Meeting, TEC Copy-Party (Australia), and a wild anti-communist rant by Hungarian C-64 groups.

Our next batch of papers comes from S11/Desire, who was so kind to scan several party invitation, flyers and magazine votesheets from his active period in the Amigademoscene in the early 1990s. They are highly interesting artefacts of the early days of the demoscene – particularly the very detailed party invitations, which give insight on how demoparties were advertised and conducted “back in the days”.

As a kind of bonus, S11 also provided us with a flyer for the (in)famous PainStation arcade machine, which was spread at the Evoke 2004 demoparty where the arcade was exhibited and excessively used by the visitors: [link]

“News” was a relatively obscure, yet quite professionally made C64cracker magazine, edited by Dave E. and Carsten Bob from southern Germany. Not much is known about it, since while there were at least eight issues produced, only one (!) made its way into the Internet age. Luckily, Se7en/Digital Excess has gone through his stash of scene materials, presenting us with #7/1988 of the mag. Written entirely in German, it dates from December 1988 and features interesting insights into the less-“elite” parts of the early C64 scene.

Illegal, founded by German C64cracker and editor Jeff Smart in 1986 and running until 1991, is considered to be one of the oldest (or possibly the oldest) scene magazines. Unlike many other mags of the time, Illegal provided a fairly balanced picture of the C64 scene and did not just promote one particular group. It had an international staff of writers, and a likewise international outreach. Released on paper, the magazine reached 38 issues, and gained immense popularity: while the first issue had a print run of ten copies, later issues could reach an initial print run up to 1000 (while this initial print run could be again photocopied and spread by sceners). Despite this immense contemporary outreach, most Illegal issues fell prey to the pre-internet black hole. Only five (!) issues (18, 19, 29, 30, 31) survived as (low-quality) scans, thanks to mags.c64.org, while further 14 issues (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38) were typed up by several people over the years – obviously missing the layout and the graphics, which were often drawn by the legendary Hobbit/Fairlight. The first 17 issues (from 1986-1987) are completely gone.

Obviously, this needs to change. It is certain that the missing Illegal issues are scattered over scene veterans’ basements, attics and memorabilia boxes. King Fisher/Triad is a case in point – while moving house, he discovered a copy of Illegal #37 from April 1989 (which up to now only survived as a type-up by Strider/Fairlight), and kindly scanned it for us. This issue features, among other things (and some rather questionable teenage humour), an early interview with Manfred Trenz and Andreas Escher, the makers of the legendary game Katakis.

Welcome! Some of you might have received the flyers about this project at Revision 2015 or at a different occasion. “GOT PAPERS?” is dedicated to preserving material artefacts of the scene – everything that is not digital and thus is in danger of disappearing from scene history, such as papermags, flyers, letters, stickers, and so on. Read more about it in the About section.

While the high-quality scans are hosted on files.scene.org, this blog is to serve as a newssite to display the newly added items. Obviously, the more people provide items to be scanned, the more news are to be read here! Two dedicated sceners did the first step: Menace and Pandur, who provided us with their collections of demoparty magazines and brochures. If you want to follow in their footsteps and have your scene materials professionally scanned in order to preserve them for future generations, then please do get in touch!